


after all this time, you and i

by its_tortle



Series: stucky one shots [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Artist Steve Rogers, Birthday, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, M/M, Pining, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, They're Soulmates Okay, Through the Years, World War II, but its a fix it dont worry, was meant to be a ficlet but got out of hand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:49:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29965944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/its_tortle/pseuds/its_tortle
Summary: Bucky's birthday through the years. (And how Steve made every one of them better.)1925, 1935, 1945, and 2025.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: stucky one shots [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1932520
Comments: 24
Kudos: 79





	after all this time, you and i

**Author's Note:**

> hey, loves! 
> 
> i woke up this morning and saw it was bucky's birthday and then this happened. i'm surprisingly happy with it given that i wrote it in a day, so i hope you like it too!!
> 
> (also: i know that bucky fell from the train before his 28th, but for the sake of the story, ignore that. it just worked so much nicer this way.)

**eight**

On March 10th, 1925, Bucky wakes up to Becca screeching in his ear, and her long tangled curls dangling in his face. 

His Ma is shushing her from beyond the curtain of hair, and little Judy is babbling nonsensically in her arm. The room is bright with sunlight, and the smell of pancakes wafts in through the hall.

“Happy Birthday, Bucky!” Becca yells, jumping dangerously close to his ribs.

He pushes her off with a grumble, but he can’t help grinning anyway. Because it’s his birthday, and he’s a whole eight years old. 

His Ma promised to bake with him and Steve, and his Dad will take them to Harvey’s, where he’ll get to pick out three whole candies.

His Pa is making good money at the bank these days, and his Ma sells her pretty embroidery to other women on the block. None of them anticipate that things will get tougher, that the bank will close and that no one will have money to spare for decorative embroidery. Now, they’re still in their bigger apartment, comfortable and with pancakes on weekends and candies on birthdays. 

Bucky jumps up with a widening grin and goes to hug his Ma’s legs, and then dashes past her down the hall, to where his father is finishing the pancakes in the kitchen.

He’s humming along to the Sinatra record and doesn’t immediately notice Bucky come in, but when he does, he cheers, and drops the spatula to scoop Bucky up.

He groans exaggeratedly as he does, and Bucky grins. “You’re getting too old for this now, aren’t you Jamie?”

Bucky nods, feeling proud. “I’m big now.”

“You sure are.”

His Pa puts him back down with another loud groan, and then lets Bucky lean up on his tip toes and flip the pancakes -- or try to, at least. He has little help.

“I may have accidentally put way too much sugar in here,” George whispers, “but that’s our secret, yeah? Don’t tell your Ma.”

Bucky swears not to. His Pa grins.

He helps his Ma set the table and only drops the cutlery once, maybe twice, and puts his plate at the head of the table today. Usually it’s his Pa’s spot, but on birthdays, it’s not.

There’s a knock in the door just a few minutes later. Bucky runs to it, ignoring the calls not to, and throws his arms around Steve before the blond has even congratulated him.

Steve grumbles into his shoulder about it, but hugs him back all the same.

When they pull back, Bucky instinctively checks his friend for cuts or bruises, and, finding none, just admires the way his cheeks are red from the cold morning air and how big his eyelashes make his eyes look. Steve is nice to look at.

“Happy birthday, Buck,” Steve grins, and then shoves a newspaper-wrapped package at him.

Bucky would open it now, but Becca is already running up to them with a loud shout and telling them to come eat because she’s about to starve (she’s always dramatic, even at six). So, Bucky sets the package down on the cabinet next to the door to his room and joins his family at the table.

Steve gets the seat to his left.

Breakfast is the usual amount of chaos, of loud kids and close calls of knocking over glasses. Becca steals from Bucky’s plate about five times, and Bucky swats at her. Steve sits there with a little smile on his face, and snorts into his milk when Bucky makes faces at him.

His Pa leans across the table and gives Bucky a brand new set of playing cards. Bucky grins and thanks him, because his old one is missing so many cards at this point that it’s hard to play a decent game of Crazy Eights. Becca gives him a birthday card that she made, which is an eyesore of color and barely legible, but Bucky already knows he’ll put it on his wall.

It’s good. Bucky is happy.

His Ma doesn’t even make him help with the cleanup after, and lets him go to his room with Steve. She tells them they can come back in half an hour to bake, but that she needs to clear this mess before they make another.

Becca takes Judy to go play doll, not caring that her little sister has no concept of the game at all, and just happy to have a playmate that won’t make the dolls be space explorers. (Space explorers are better than whatever Becca can come up with anyway, Bucky thinks.) (Steve says he’s right.)

Back in the comfort of his own space, with the dust dancing in the sunlight and Steve’s bony legs settling on his bed, Bucky peels the newspaper off of the packet.

It falls away to reveal a little notebook, faded red and cloth bound. _The Adventures of Steve and Bucky,_ it reads, in a pretty cursive that Bucky knows to be Steve’s Ma’s.

He’s grinning before he even opens it, but when he does, his smile widens to where his face might split open.

Flipping through the pages, he finds them full of drawings, of him and Steve in cool superhero suits with little speech bubbles, on the ground and in the air and in _space._ It’s bright and colorful, the reds and the blues and the greens mixing together in a blur of adventure and heroism. Bucky is so in love with it he thinks he might burst.

“It’s a little messy,” Steve says sheepishly. “And I started with time travel but then you got into space stuff, so now we also fight bullies from space. But it’s in the future, so it’s confusing. And I wasn’t able to finish the story in time so-”

“Shut up,” Bucky tells him, looking back up with wide eyes. “It’s amazing. You’re amazing. I love it.”

Steve straightens and a hopeful smile breaks out on his face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s the best present in the world.”

Steve grins, and Bucky does too, and then he leans over and pulls Steve close and tucks Steve’s soft hair under his chin. Steve lets him.

“We can finish the story together,” Bucky tells him. “We’re gonna punch those alien jerks.”

And when Winnie pokes her head into Bucky’s room half an hour later, she finds the boys sprawled out on the floor with crayons all around them arguing about what color the aliens should be.

She closes the door with a smile, and decides they’ll bake in the afternoon instead.

  
  
  
  


**eighteen**

On March 10th, 1935, Bucky wakes to the sounds of a truck honking outside and the rain pattering against the windows. 

He stretches one arm over his head, using the other to rub at his tired eyes. When they focus, they find Steve asleep beside him. Sarah had had a late shift again last night, so Steve had just stayed over. As he often did, in the winter, when it was too cold to walk home late in the dark.

Bucky watches Steve breathe, the rise of his chest and the way his lips part just a little when he breathes out. He’s at peace now, not in pain, not angry, not carrying the weight of the world on his tiny shoulders. He’s right where Bucky wants him, with bony limbs tangled in worn sheets and his smell seeping into Bucky’s pillow. His eyelashes are fanning over his cheekbones so delicately, so beautifully, and Bucky wants nothing more than to reach out and brush his bangs from his forehead.

He doesn’t. He shouldn’t.

He shouldn’t just be lying there like that, either, just staring at his best friend, but he’s accepted that he just can’t help it. Bucky’s always liked looking at Steve, but now it’s twisted into something so much more dangerous, something fierce and burning in his chest. Something wrong.

His thoughts are interrupted by another loud shout from outside, and Bucky begins to wake up fully. He takes a moment to collect his bearings.

Wait. Fuck. It’s Wednesday.

With a frantic glance at the clock on his nightstand, Bucky finds that it’s after nine. He should have been at the shop more than an hour ago. 

Why the hell didn’t his alarm work?

He curses and shoots up out of the sheets. Maybe if he makes it there now he can work late and convince Mr. Kline not to deduct any of this week’s salary.

Bucky already has his shirt halfway buttoned when Steve sits up beside him, groggily rubbing at his face.

“What ‘re you doing, Buck?”

Damn his morning voice. Bucky internally rolls his eyes at himself.

“Alarm didn’t go off,” Bucky explains, finishing the last button. “I shoulda been at the store an hour ago.”

He moves to get up, but a hand on his shoulder stops him.

“You have the day off,” Steve tells him. “Come back to bed.”

“I-What?” Bucky knows he didn’t call for a day off. His Ma is only barely making rent and Eloise desperately needs new shoes. He tries to help Sarah out with Steve’s prescriptions where he can.

“I called Klein yesterday, you’re free,” Steve says. His eyes are big and blue and a little sleepy.

Bucky sighs. He opens his mouth to argue, but Steve cuts him off.

“You can take a day off,” he snaps. “Come on, it’s your eighteenth. Come back to bed and then we can get up at eleven and make vinegar cake. And then we can put the cushions on the floor in the living room and play cards and lie around and I’ll draw you to feed your ego. Your Ma said she’d take herself and the girls to your Aunt’s house and we can have the apartment to ourselves until eight.”

Bucky deflates. He feels a smile pull at the corners of his mouth. “You have it all figured out, huh?”

Steve hums with that stupid smug smile of his. “I took care of all of it.”

“You can’t even take care of yourself.”

Steve glares at him, but there’s no heat behind it. There’s just him, with that too big shirt exposing his pretty collarbones, sitting on Bucky’s bed. And he’s beckoning him back to it, saying they can lie there and share warmth for another few hours, not worrying about the world outside. 

And Bucky’s a twisted mess of a human being, so he unbuttons his shirt and slips back under the duvet.

Steve grins, and immediately starts telling him about some weird dream he had about talking raccoons and gods and spaceships.

Bucky settles in the warmth, and presses his leg to Steve’s. 

Steve presses back, and the heat behind Bucky’s sternum catches fire.

  
  
  


**twenty-eight**

Bucky is awake when it becomes March 10th, 1945. 

He’s outside, keeping watch in front of the camp while the Commandos try to get some rest in the tents behind him. The dwindling fire brings some heat, but not enough to be really warm. He can’t remember the last time he was really warm.

There’s a cuckoo calling in the distance, and though Bucky usually hates the sound, he finds it comforting to know that this forest is still alive now, despite everything. A lot of the time, it’s filled with the echoes of gunshots and yelling and loud motors. Not the sounds a forest is supposed to make.

A tent rustles behind him, and he tenses, instinctively reaches for his weapon. But it’s just Steve, emerging from the flap of his tent, so he lets his hand fall. His defense falls.

“Hey,” Bucky greets quietly. “What’s up?”

Steve comes toward him with a little smile, and doesn’t immediately say anything. So Bucky just watches him.

Steve is familiar bright eyes and a pretty smile and soft hair, accompanied by a body that’s not quite his own, and somehow still perfect for him. He’s taller than Bucky now, broader, all strong strokes and graceful movements where he was once delicate lines and bony elbows. He’s grown into himself now, is more sure of himself and his capabilities. But he still draws, and makes snarky comments, and puts his left sock on before his right.

He’s still a livewire, and Bucky still loves him.

Steve sits down on the ground beside Bucky, and bumps his (strong, beautiful, devastating) shoulder into his. 

“Happy birthday, Buck.”

Bucky huffs a smile and gives Steve a look. “ ‘D you stay up until midnight for this?”

“Maybe,” Steve confesses, “but I was up anyway.”

He leans over and retrieves a piece of paper that Bucky didn’t notice when he came out, and hands it to Bucky.

_Happy 28th!_ , the back reads. Steve’s handwriting looks so much like Sarah’s. _This isn’t quite what I envisioned for the Adventures of Steve and Bucky, but we’ll have more good ones._

Bucky flips it over before he starts actually crying, and finds that it didn’t help that cause much at all.

It’s a pencil sketch of Steve and him, from the back, looking over what he immediately recognizes as the Grand Canyon. The paper is faded and there’s a stain in the corner, but each stroke is so delicate and beautiful and deliberate that Bucky thinks it belongs in the Louvre. He takes a shaky breath, trying not to cry.

“Thank you,” he whispers, knowing it’s not enough even as he says it.

Steve leans a little closer, like he knows. “Course. We’ll go together,” he promises. “After this is all over.”

There’s a few things Bucky could say, like that he doesn't think there is an after for him, or that he thinks Steve will probably be preoccupied with Carter when he makes it out of here, but he doesn’t.

Instead, he just smiles, and briefly squeezes Steve’s knee where it’s pressed to his.

The cuckoo calls again, more faraway than it was last time.

“I’m sorry that’s all I can give you,” Steve says suddenly. “I know it’s not-”

“Don’t fucking apologize,” Bucky interrupts. “This” -- he motions to the paper in his hand -- “is more than I possibly could have asked for. It’s incredible, and I love it.”

Even with the darkness around them, Bucky can see the color rise to Steve’s cheeks. Fuck, he’s in love.

And then Steve frowns, just a bit, under his happy affection, and looks up at Bucky with stormy eyes.

“You deserve good things, Buck.”

Bucky swallows. He’s not quite sure if it’s true, right now, but he won’t say that.

“I have you.”

And Steve must know he’s deflecting, using flattery to get out of talking about his feelings, but it’s his birthday, so he lets it slide.

His head finds Bucky’s shoulder, and they sit in silence, watching the quiet forest around them, listening to the cuckoo call.

_This_ , Bucky thinks. _This is all the good things I need._

  
  
  
  


**a hundred and eight (or a hundred and four?? who knows)**

On March 10th 2025, Bucky wakes to warmth.

For a long moment, he doesn’t make any indication that he’s awake and just basks in the feeling of Steve’s chest pressed up against his back and the soft kisses he can sense being pressed against the curve of his metal shoulder. The linen of the duvet is pleasant on his bare legs, and the room smells like spring and lemongrass and Steve and home.

“Morning,” he hums a little groggily. He can feel a smile against his shoulder.

“Happy birthday, Buck.”

Bucky turns in his arms and looks at Steve, still sleep-mussed and tired. He’s changed a bit, of course. There’s a beard for one, and grown out hair, and a new scar on his temple. There are new lines around his face and a fatigue that wasn’t there a hundred years ago, but he’s still big and bright and beautiful. 

And Bucky loves him.

And by some miracle, Steve loves him back.

The universe dragging them through hell three too many times made some things clear to Steve, apparently. Now, he claims he loved Bucky all along, but was just too dense to see it. 

Fucking dumbass. Bucky’s dumbass.

He leans in to steal a kiss from those pretty smiling lips, because he can do that now.

When he leans in to deepen it though -- which is... not uncommon -- Steve hums and pulls away -- which… is.

Bucky pouts.

Steve grins, eyes twinkling, and leans in to kiss his pouting mouth. 

“I forced Nat to make pancakes,” he explains as he pulls back, “and I don’t want them to go cold.”

Bucky pouts for just another moment before he frowns. “Nat can cook?”

“Nat can do everything.”

And Bucky really can’t argue with that.

He pulls Steve closer again though, to brush his nose against that crooked (beautiful) monstrosity and drop another kiss to Steve’s lips.

“You’ll make it up to me?”

Steve grins wickedly, mischief in his eyes. “I fully intend to.”

“Ooh,” Bucky pulls back. “You have a plan?”

Steve hums in affirmative. “Yup.”

He drops one more kiss to Bucky’s lips before he sits up and leaves the warmth of their bed in search of clothes.

Bucky only stares at his naked backside for two (maybe three) moments before he opens his mouth again.

“Who's strong and brave here to save the American Way?” he sings, grinning. “Who vows to fight like a man for what's right, night and day?”

“Bucky!” Steve whines. 

“Who will campaign door to door for America? Carry the flag shore to shore for America? From Hoboken to Spokane?”

“I hate you.”

“The Star Spangled Man with a plan!”

Bucky gets a sweater to the face, but he’s laughing, and so is Steve, because it’s his birthday.

And he deserves good things.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are so dearly appreciated :)
> 
> talk to me on [tumblr](https://its-tortle.tumblr.com/)!


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